The Devil, You Say?
by LilLolaBlue
Summary: You all know Jack. But have you met his father? His wife? His little girl, Harlequin, NYC's most ultraviolent mask hero? He couldn't raise her himself, so he gave her up to someone he could trust. Batman. The Devil, you say? You may be right.  NO SLASH


**THE DEVIL, YOU SAY?**

**Chapter One: Napier Family Values**

**Inverness, Scotland, 1900**

Mr. Campbell couldn't quite decide why he was sorry that his fellow passenger was also travelling to London.

Dr. Napier was a very well-dressed, well-spoken, mannerly gentleman, with a pleasant voice who was knowledgeable about many topics, and knew when to converse and when to read his book and look out the window.

There was just something in the way he looked at you, something in his unnaturally bright green-eyed gaze, and in that mirthless smile of his that made Mr. Campbell go zero at the bone.

In the end, he gave up his compartment, and ended up rooming with a garrulous Italian with a respiratory condition that "was-a no contagious."

The poor fellow wheezed constantly with his asthmatic complaints, the Scottish highlands being dreadful on a man with a weak chest, and snored like a goat.

However, Mr. Campbell was still glad to be shut of Dr. Napier.

Iindeed, he would be very glad if he never met the man, or any man like him, ever again, as long as he lived.

Dr. Angus Napier, son of Dr. Malcolm Napier, of Inverness, Scotland and Harriet Shaughnessy Napier, of Dublin, Ireland, had sold the crumbling family estate to an American who was getting a pig in a poke. He was en-route to London to take a steamer to New York, where he had bought a piece of waterfront property that he was planning to use as a chemical plant and research laboratory.

The good doctor, a chemist and chemical engineer, who was all of twenty years old, seemed to have everything a man could possess.

He was good-looking, cultured, wealthy, brilliant, well-educated, well-dressed and well-mannered.

His only problem was that he did not have a soul, and his heart was indeed black as midnight in a coal mine.

His condition was known, at the time, as moral insanity.

Dr. Napier had no use for people who were weaker or stupider than him, and he had little affinity even for those who were strong and intelligent. He simply had no feelings of warmth or empathy towards anyone.

The closest he came to it was that the refined-looking red-haired doctor was a satyr of epic proportions who ravaged women in flocks and made use of prostitutes where willing women were not available for free.

And had that been his only problem, it would have merely been unfortunate, but, Dr. Napier was the man who put the mad in mad scientist.

Well beneath the family estate, in a deep grotto that his American buyer would never find, but that he had still dynamited and bricked shut, were a great quantity of bodies.

Some of them were of experimental subjects.

Drunkards and other destitute wretches would quite willingly agree to most things if they were paid, there was never any need to force them to be subjects, and they had all died quite accidentally.

There were also a few victims of his unfortunate temper.

Along with psychopathology and an abnormally robust sex drive, a violent temper and homicidal tendencies were often Napier family traits.

Angus was unlucky enough to have inherited them all.

And there was his final victim, Annabel MacLeod, who was, until about a month ago, Mrs. Angus Napier.

Well, Annabel was in the churchyard, but she was still dead.

Angus married because he was expected to, and he married a respectable woman because he was expected to do that, as well.

He was delighted to find that he could awaken a passion in his virginal wife that was akin to nymphomania.

Unfortunately, however for Annabel, she was an extremely dull woman, and not very intelligent.

The combination of her ardour, which she often expressed in the most cringe-worthy cheap dime-novel romantic sentiments, her bovine stupidity, her pre-occupation with trivial matters and her habitual incessant chatter about same drove Dr. Napier to distraction.

He offered her a divorce, even offered to settle on her the estate and a large alimony payment.

Dr. Napier would still have enough for his New York venture, and Annabel was no Bluebeard's wife who would go searching for the grotto.

He had been quite honest with her, telling her that for all of her willingness and eagerness to meet his sexual needs, she was a dull and boring woman, quite annoying, and that he could presumably find an intelligent woman with a high libido who would not expect marriage when he went to America.

Perhaps even a series of them.

He also told her that if she would not accept divorce that he would murder her and make it look like an accident, something that would be easy for a man of his knowledge and background.

She refused him the divorce.

Dr. Napier gave her a fortnight to make up her mind.

Every day, at tea-time, he would ask her if she had changed her mind.

On the fourteenth day, he brought her a cup of tea he had doctored in his personal lab, and asked her one last time if she would grant him a divorce.

She said no.

He even informed her that it was the end of the fortnight, and her refusal meant certain death.

She said no, again, and was in the middle of one of her pointless platitudes about love and what he was really trying to do with these absurd threats and ultimatums when she keeled over.

Quite dead.

The death had been attributed to acute gastroenteritis.

Angus had looked suitably bereaved at the funeral.

As he lay alone in his berth on the train, that would take him to London, for his departure to New York, Angus briefly thought of Annabel.

She had a beautiful body, and she was a lusty woman who was willing to do just about anything for him.

He missed the way she would give him a below job with great gusto and look up at him with eyes full of cow-like devotion and misty-eyed pleasure.

It was too bad that she was so dreadfully boring and such a terrible chatterbox.

However, nature called, and with Annabel resting in peace at the Inverness churchyard, Dr. Napier arose, dressed, went to the club car, and made the acquaintance of a Mrs. Barnes.

She was a plump, merry widow about ten years his senior who was in the club car at that hour looking for just such a man as Dr. Napier.

She retired with him to his berth, and introduced the young doctor to a few novelties she had discovered while a young officer's wife in India.

He was glad to discover that she too was travelling all the way through to London.

Once in London, however, Dr. Napier discovered that Mr. Barnes was very much alive, very much the burly, moustache twirling Sergeant-Major type, and very much waiting for his wife at the station.

And so, Dr. Napier and Mrs. Barnes ended their assignation.

Over the next 24 years, Dr. Napier was, for one reason or another, responsible for the deaths of at least fifteen or twenty more people, and possibly a great deal more.

Perhaps as many as, oh, say a hundred?

Although only one of them was a woman he had dallied with, all in all, Mrs. Barnes had rather lucked out.

**Brooklyn, New York, 1924, Apartment of Ellen O'Rourke**

In 1914, Ellen O'Rourke had been a beautiful young woman who worked as a high-priced call girl in a posh Manhattan brothel.

By 1924 she was a toothless, raddled old drab, broken by five live births, two still births, six back-alley abortions, and her addictions to morphine and alcohol.

Back in her salad days, however, she had been the preferred escort of a certain Dr. Angus Napier; indeed he had monopolised her services for months.

Miss O'Rourke began to entertain fantasies that perhaps the doctor was falling in love with her, and that he would take her as his mistress and set her up in an apartment, but he quit her as abruptly as he had taken up with her, and she had made no attempt to contact him to tell him she was having his child.

When the boy was born, she named him John, put the doctor's name on his birth certificate, gave him up for adoption, and didn't think of him or Angus Napier for the next ten years, until she happened to read an article about him in _The New York Times_.

The years had been kind to him, he didn't look much different at 44 than he had at 34.

According to the article, the millionaire scientist's one regret was that he had no heirs on which to settle the family fortune.

Ellen suddenly thought of the child.

She went to see Dr. Napier, and offered to sell him the birth certificate, and the name of the orphanage where his son was presumably still living, for the princely sum of one thousand dollars.

Dr. Napier's bright green eyes with their unpleasant light went yellowish and incandescent with rage.

"You mean you had a child of mine, and didn't tell me?"

"Well, I didn't think you'd want the responsibility for us, Angus."

"For you, never! I had what I wanted from you and I was done with you. But, I would have paid you well to go on your way and leave my son with me! God only knows what they've done to him in some orphan's home! Have you the documents on you?" he shouted.

"I'll have the money, first." Ellen reminded him.

He gave her one thousand in cash, which he took from one drawer, and placed the documents carefully in another.

After locking that drawer, Dr. Napier flew into a wild rage, screaming that his son had likely been subjected to ten years of beatings, abuse, neglect, and possibly even sexual assault , languishing in some grubby orphanage.

He then accomplished all of the aforementioned but but the sexual assault on the body of Ellen O'Rourke, resulting in her rather painful and agonising death.

He had been considering subjecting her to a violent rape, but decided against it.

For one thing, as an accomplished seducer, he found the idea of rape distasteful.

For another, a woman such as Ellen had become was likely a cornucopia of venereal diseases.

Therefore, Dr. Napier satisfied his vengeance on the woman by punching, kicking and strangling her to death.

He disposed of her body in his personal factory, in the usual way, and immediately set out to reclaim the one human being in the world he thought he might be capable of having regard for.

His son.

**St. Mary's Home For Children, Brooklyn, 1924**

Sr. Elizabeth was not accustomed to visitors like the one who came in through the grey, ageing doors of the grey, ageing orphanage.

He was an unusually tall man, and he looked taller for his angular lankiness, although he was not at all gangly in his long-limbed, angular stride.

The man moved with grace and self assurance.

In addition, he was extremely well-dressed in an elegantly tailored three-piece suit.

It was grey blue, with thin chalk-white pinstripes, a contrasting black vest with a gold pocket watch on a chain, and spats.

The cuffs that protruded from his suit were powder blue, and affixed with sapphire cufflinks in a silver setting that matched his sapphire blue silk tie, and the sapphire blue silk hatband on his black fedora.

His large hands were professionally manicured, and when he removed his hat, Sr. Elizabeth could see that his hair, which was thick, wavy, and a shocking shade of ginger, was immaculately cut.

He had a long, but pleasant face, and a lantern jaw, and spoke with a trace of a Scottish brogue.

There was, however, despite his impeccable looks and manner, something terribly unpleasant in his bright green eyes that seemed to affix her to the spot.

"Good morning, Sister. I am Dr. Angus Napier. Can I speak to the director of this establishment? Immediately, please. The matter is of utmost importance." he asked.

"The Dr. Angus Napier? The scientist? From the profile in the _Times_?"

"The same. You must know, then, that I am a very busy man. Perhaps I should have called in advance for an appointment. I do apologise."

"That's quite all right, Dr. Napier. I'm sure Sr. Theresa has time to see you."

Sr. Theresa had had asked not to be disturbed all morning, but, even if she had tried, Sr. Elizabeth would have been unable to refuse Dr. Napier.

She was also quite glad to be shut of him, and didn't know why.

Sr. Theresa was struck by the same air of unpleasantness as Sr. Elizabeth.

There was an unnatural light in the esteemed Dr. Napier's eyes, and something repellent in his impeccable manners.

Repellant, but yet oddly familiar.

Something she just couldn't put her finger on.

Dr. Napier produced a folder from his brown English leather briefcase, from which he drew a series of photographs and documents that told an unfortunate story.

"I won't try to sugar-coat my indiscretions, Sister. In 1914 or thereabouts, I conducted a business transaction with a shanty Irish prostitute named Ellen O'Rourke. As a man who was born of a good and decent Irishwoman, I hate to use such a term, but the girl was what she was. It's come to my attention that, nine months later, she gave birth to a son, who she named John. This is her picture. And this is John O'Rourke's birth certificate. I have reason to believe that this child is my son; matters have come to my attention recently that have convinced me of this. It was at my behest that the officer came last month to take a blood sample from the boy. After a paternity test I performed, personally, in addition to the test authorised by the state, my suspicions were confirmed. Here are the results of both tests. Do I need to obtain a court order, or would it be possible for me to collect my son, immediately?"

With an uncomfortable jolt, Sr. Theresa realized that the son shared the same look as his father.

Jack was the spitting image of the older man, right down to the odd lightness of his relentlessly bright and inquiring green eyes.

"Dr. Napier, there are a few things I think you should know about your son."

"That he is by turns bookish and withdrawn with being boisterous? That he can be rather violent, in a casual way? That the other children have learned to either follow after him, or give him a wide berth? That his intelligence and aptness are as shocking as his seeming lack of feeling for those who are weaker, slower, and stupider than he? Certainly he is brilliant, but erratic. I know these traits. I share them. He is my son. What he is, I am. And so was my father before me." Dr. Napier replied.

Sr. Theresa called on the intercom to Sr. Elisabeth, who, after a longer interval of time than Sr. Theresa would have preferred to spend with Dr. Napier, brought John O'Rourke to the office.

The boy, tall for his age, kept himself clean and his clothes neat.

Indeed, his only remorse after engaging in some of the vicious fights in which he had participated was that he had become soiled and rumpled.

He carried with him a battered but well-kept suitcase with great distaste.

Dr. Napier rose from his chair, suddenly furious, his face flushed with anger.

"See here, what's this shabby thing you've saddled my boy with! And after he's taken such care with his appearance! Look, here, lad, do they call you Jack?"

"Yes, sir."

"Don't call me sir, lad, I'm your father."

"Yes, Dad."

"That's better."

Dr. Napier opened his briefcase.

"You may arrange your things in my briefcase, Jack, provided that you do not disturb mine. Take as much time as you need. I understand that you must have your things just so And then we will take you get some new clothes. And enroll you in a decent school. . From now on, everything in your life will be just so. "

The doctor looked approvingly at his son as he carefully arranged his possessions in the briefcase, careful not to disturb his newfound father's arrangements.

"Leave that broken old case here, Jack. Let these people have it."

Jack took his father's hand and walked with him into the bright spring day.

"Where have you been, Dad?"

"I didn't know I had a son, all these years. I came here as soon as I found out. Have they harmed you here, Jack, my lad?"

"Yes, Dad. They've done terrible things to me. Lousy, evil, rotten things. Dirty stuff, too." Jack confessed.

Dr. Angus Napier smiled down at his son.

Diabolically.

"Then we will take care of that, Jack my lad. You and I. We shall see to them, all right."

* * *

><p>A week later, St. Mary's burned to the ground in a horrendous explosion and fire that burnt so hot and so fast that the firemen could do little but watch the orange and yellow flames consume the building.<p>

In the crowd of horrified onlookers, firemen, policemen, and newspaper reporters, was a tall, well- dressed man in an elegant suit, holding a similarly-attired child by the hand.

"You see, Jack, my lad? We Napiers always see to those who have wronged us. Always."

John O'Rourke Napier, commonly known as Jack, was what doctors in the 1920's would call a psychopath.

Other than annoyance, contempt, and when provoked, rage, he had never had any feeling at all for his fellow human beings.

But, when he looked up at his father, watching a grin play across the older man's lips, as he rubbed his fiery red beard and beheld his handiwork, something extraordinary happened to Jack Napier.

He felt love.

Love, real, genuine love shone out of Jack Napier's terrible green eyes.

He began to weep tears of joy, the first tears he had ever shed.

His look of love was returned a thousandfold by his father, who had, in 44 years, never felt such a curious emotion for anyone.

Affectionately, Angus smoothed his son's hair where the breeze had ruffled it.

"Don't cry, Jack my lad. Because we are together now, you and I. And only death will part us. We'd best be on our way, though. If the wind shifts, the smoke will blow on us, and it's bound to be quite toxic."

Angus laughed at the thought that some of the onlookers would also be overcome by the smoke, and Jack, thinking the same thing, laughed, also.

Leading his son by the hand, Dr. Angus Napier walked to his Bentley, opened the door for young Jack, and after getting in on his side, drove away.

**Excerpted From "The Big Joke: The Unholy Truth About The Joker, Batman, the Comedian & the Harlequin. By John Smith (pseudonym)  
><strong>

The unholy history of the Napier family begins with some nasty rumours about Dr. Malcolm Napier, a physician from Inverness, Scotland, and the untimely deaths of wives, mistresses, and children.

But for our purposes, we shall begin with the arrival of his son, Dr. Angus Napier, in the US, from Scotland, in 1900.

The brilliant chemist's past is shrouded in mystery, which may be for the best.

Some true crime writers, myself included, believe that Dr. Angus Napier, one of the most brilliant scientists in American history, whose discoveries were nothing short of revolutionary, whose texts on chemistry and chemical engineering are still used in universities, today, was also one of the most prolific murderers of his age.

Or any other.

His body count is estimated to be somewhere between 200 and 300 victims in his lifetime, ranging from willing participants in his diabolical experiments, to inconvenient women, and encompassing, most frighteningly, simply people that the dapper, well-spoken, well-mannered and brilliant psychopath simply found annoying or inconvenient.

His son, John O'Rourke Napier was born in 1914, somewhere in Brooklyn, on an unknown date.

His mother, whose surname was O'Rourke, was not married to Dr. Napier.

Miss O'Rourke, a prostitute, abandoned her son at birth, and he was raised in an orphanage in one of the five boroughs.

Dr. Napier was unaware of the existence of his son for some years, and how he discovered he had a son is unknown.

However, when the young man, then known as Jack O'Rourke was 10, he was taken from the orphanage by his father, and recognised by Dr. Napier as his son.

John then took his father's surname.

The orphanage burnt down a week or so later after a terrible explosion.

Dr. Napier and his son were among the onlookers.

150 people died, mostly nuns and children under the age of 15.

It was an act of pure and uncomplicated paternal love.

A showing by Dr. Napier of love and loyalty to his son.

Indeed, the evidence shows that he was an exemplary father, and that he and his equally brilliant and equally psychopathic offspring enjoyed a warm, loving, and frighteningly normal father-son relationship.

There is a record of a John O'Rourke Napier graduating from New York University with a degree in chemical engineering in 1932.

If this is the same man, then rumours that the Joker has a genius-level intellect are confirmed; he would have been only 18 years old.

This would have been a family trait.

His father, who was twenty when he founded Napier Chemical upon emigrating to New York City in 1900, had a PH.D in chemistry.

In 1933, a young Irish hood known as "Crazy Jack" began making appearances in the East New York and Red Hook sections of Brooklyn.

He was unaffiliated with any of the major Irish gangsters in the area, but with intelligence, ruthlessness, and a flair for leadership, he became a force to be reckoned with in the underworld.

In 1936, ten prominent gangsters were machine-gunned to death on the site of the Napier Chemical Plant, on the waterfront.

Soon after, their putative murderer, "Crazy Jack" Napier gained control of the Irish rackets in Brooklyn.

His only real challenger for power, suspected mutant and feared East New York enforcer, once in the employ of one of Napier's dead enemies, "Good Looking" Mickey Blake, AKA Mick the Merciless, died in 1938, most likely murdered in his apartment by his son Edward and his daughter Edith, after escaping from Death Row.

The police did not arrest the dead man's children; in fact they covered up the crime.

It only exists in whispers and rumours.

Largely because Michael Patrick Blake was a demon in human form, a monster who may have had less victims than the Drs. Napier, but surpasses their evil in the nature of his crimes.

"Mick the Merciless" was a psychopath and a sexual sadist, a vicious, brutal deviant who enjoying beating, torturing and raping the unfortunate men who couldn't pay their loans to him, and also their wives and families.

Worse, Mick the Merciless was widely believed to take his work home with him.

He is rumoured to have murdered five of his 12 children, and it boggles the most depraved imagination to think what Hell he must have visited on his wife and the survivors.

At the time of his father's death, Edward Morgan Blake, 14, who is most likely the young man who became the Comedian in 1938, and certainly is now, even if he is not the Comedian, one of the most powerful men in America, was employed on a skyscraper construction site on a piece of land in Manhattan owned by Dr. John O'Rourke Napier.

From 1939 until 1941, Eddie Blake worked as a truck driver for Napier Chemical.

In 1940, Dr. Angus Napier died in an explosion at Napier Chemical, which passed to his son, Dr. John O'Rourke Napier, who worked at the plant as an engineer.

Rumour had it the explosion was not an accident, and great bloodletting on the waterfront followed; the son's revenge for his beloved father's untimely and unnatural death.

Whether it was biology, or a simple quirk of fate, the Napiers seem to have a chink in their armor that makes their homicidal psychosis even more frightening.

They tend to be good family men.

The younger Dr. Napier seemed to be no exception.

In 1940, he married 16 year old Irish-Sicilian Meriwether Damiano, of East New York, who was a close personal friend of Edith and Agnes Blake, Edward Blake's sisters.  
>Merrie Daminao lived in the same building as the Blakes.<p>

Her mother, Magdelene Malloy Damnio was the neighbourhood witch, the building's unofficial doctor.

Her daughter, Merrie, took over her trade.

Until the time of her death, she was the only doctor that the Comedian or Eddie Blake were ever known to visit; it was Merrie Napier who saved the Comedian's life in 1940 after he was stabbed in the chest.

A family picture of sorts from this era exists.

We see a tall, lanky man with red hair, green eyes and a wide, cocky smile, in a gangster suit, wielding a machine gun, posing with a young Comedian in the earliest form of his current costume, brandishing a shotgun.

Included in the photograph is Merrie Damiano Napier, Edie Blake, Aggie Blake, and the common-law husband they share to this day, a Russian emigrant named Ivan Alexeivitch Stavrogin, veteran of the Kolyma gulags in Siberia, where he was known as "Ivan the Bear".

Family can be an odd thing.

Aggie Blake named her son Michael Patrick, just like her father.

As for the photo, it is a smoking gun if there ever was one.

Throughout the war years, Dr. John Napier continued to run Napier Chemical and "Crazy Jack" Napier, know to the superhero community as "Red Hood", continued his reign as one of New York's most powerful syndicate bosses.

In 1947, both men disappeared, after an accident and fire that gutted Napier Chemical, utterly.

The Joker made his first appearance as a supervillain later that year.

He would eventually rise to the highest of heights as Dictator For Life of the Society of Supervillains, and reputedly, the only non-Italian boss to have a seat on the Commission.

These would certainly be circumstances that would unwind most marriages, but, apparently, a woman who has been saddled with the title "witch", one which her own mother, a practitioner of folk medicine with some rumoured psychic abilities had and passed down to her daughter, made Merrie Napier of stronger stuff.

As of 1949, the loyal Meriwether Napier, who did not abandon her husband after his disfigurement, was quite possibly the only living creature, besides his father, that psychopath Jack Napier ever loved.

That all changed on April 1 of that year, with the birth of his red-haired, green-eyed daughter, whom he named Trivelino J. Napier.

Trivelino is the Italian word for "Harlequin" or "Joker".

The J doesn't stand for anything, it is only an initial.

In the next year or two, the Joker solidified his position as New York's own Professor Moriarty, the "Clown Prince of Crime", as well as the perpetrator of a series of public "experiments", continuations of his father's private work, that resulted in mass poisonings and several deaths.

Incongruously, the private Jack Napier enjoyed a warm and loving home life with his wife and child, much as he had growing up with his father.

It was not fated to last.

**New York City, Napier Chemical Co, 1947**

**I: Jack**

"…but Mrs. Napier!"

"Don't give me that shit! You let me in there to see my Jack!"

"Mrs. Napier, I can't….ooooof!"

Merrie, Jack thought, fondly, looking at himself in the mirror, always did have quite a right hook.

The doctor fell through the doorway, and Merrie stepped over him.

Jack stood in front of a full length mirror, naked, examining himself in the mirror for obvious defects.

He turned to face his wife, showing her his bright new smile.

"Well, my dear? What do you think? Be honest."

If she had reacted with horror, even if she had and then covered it up, Jack would not have been able to live with it.

He would have killed her quickly and himself slowly.

Merrie hauled the doctor to his feet and shook him.

"Is that all! You idiot! You bastard! You got me all worried that I had some horrible, twisted cripple for a husband, that he's lost his mind or his legs, or his sight, and there's not a goddamn thing wrong with him! Take this money and get out! Out!" Merrie howled.

Jack had to laugh.

"I don't know if I like it. My hair is green. Look, _all_ my hair is green."

Merrie laughed a little too.

"Well, if I laugh, you'll know I'm laughing with you. Not at you. Until I get used to it."

"But what about my face?"

"Well, you know Jack, I always did love your smile. Now I'll get to see it all the time."

She wasn't pretending; she meant every word.

"Merrie, you're a saint."

"I am not. I just know what I want. I've known since I was 13 years old. Why should a little thing like this change it? Come on downstairs, Jack. Let's go home, and get you under the covers. You must be freezing."

**The Joker's Bunker, April 1, 1949**

Pace.

Nothing to do but pace.

Pace and entertain thoughts of murder.

If that doctor does anything to harm my Merrie, if there is anything wrong with our child…

The Joker giggled to himself, just thinking about it.

That made his boys nervous.

Good.

You have to keep these meathead henchmen type on their toes.

Because good help was so hard to find in his line of work.

Maybe I should begin offering a benefits package.

Put them on the tax forms as employees of Napier Chemical, Inc.

He began thinking about the baby, again.

Well, she should be normal.

I'm not a mutant; there were no changes at the genetic-molecular level.

Just then, he heard a baby cry, and a horrible scream.

The doctor came running out of Merrie's and his bedroom.

"Those eyes! Those eyes!" he gibbered.

"Oh do, be quiet, you sound like an unscientific idiot. Here's your money. Boys, show him out."

Jack knocked on the bedroom door.

Merrie held the tiny baby, wrapped in a blanket made of purple velvet and green silk, out to her husband.

"Well, she looks like me, Jack, but she's got your red hair. Your smile, too. And your eyes."

The Joker took the bundle of baby into his arms with great trepidation.

He had loved his father.

He loved his wife.

His father had loved him.

What if?

What if he terrified the child?

What if he felt nothing for her?

What if?

But no.

The white skin, the rictus grin, the green hair didn't bother the little girl.

Her shining green eyes met his, and she instinctively knew.

She giggled, and reached for him with both of her tiny baby hands.

Jack breathed a sigh of relief, and beamed a great and terrible smile.

"That's Daddy's little girl! Daddy's little Trivelino. Our little girl. That's Italian for "Joker", Merrie, my dear. Isn't she beautiful?"

"Of course she is, Jack. She's yours. What else would she be?" Merrie replied.

"Ours, Merrie."

"You know what I meant."

**The Joker's Bunker, 1951**

"Dr…druh…druh…Drug…kin…king…kingpin. In….puh…puh…please…police..ruh…ruh Raid? Drug Kingpin in Police Raid! What does that mean, Daddy?"

The Joker lowered his newspaper.

"Jack, did she just read that headline?"

"Certainly. I told you I've been teaching her to read."

"But she's two!"

"Oh, fiddlesticks, I could read when I was two. I don't ever remember not knowing how to read, in fact. That's very good, Livvie. It means that some money-hungry idiot who wasn't smart enough to pay off the right screw is off to the Big House."

Livvie looked at him, quizzically, her eyes bright.

"I want to read the rest!"

"No! No _New York Post_ for you. It'll give you nightmares. You know those books Daddy reads you?"

"Classics?"

"Yes. They make classics comic books. You can read those. For now."

"Why don't the police arrest you, Daddy?"

"Because they are corrupt and stupid."

"Can't Batman arrest you?"

"No. He's not with the police."

"Why?"

"Because he's dedicated and smart. Like Daddy. That's why Daddy doesn't try to kill him. He's a worthy adversary."

Merrie snorted into her coffee.

"Tell that to Liv when he gets you sent to Arkham."

"My dear, being sent to Arkham is all part of the rich panoply of supervillainy. Which reminds me. I don't want you going with Livvie to that park, alone. Those Church of Humanity lunatics are still out there."

"Bullshit, Jack! My best friend brings her son and her niece there, and Paulie and Laurie are Liv's friends. Already the other kids set them apart. I won't have the three of them broken up; they're all the friends they're likely to have. And I'm not giving up my life because of a few nuts."

"Will you at least quit ducking your bodyguards?"

"Goons! I refuse to be followed all around the city by a pack of goons! Besides, Jack, they'd really have to be crazy to screw around with you."

Merrie had a point.

No one was fool enough to double-cross the Joker.

**New York City, 1951, Napier Chemical Company**

Just like Magdelene Malloy Damiano operated out of their apartment in East New York, Merrie Damiano Napier kept up the "family business" from a room in the burnt-out remains of Napier Chemical, which she lived, underneath, in a bunker, with her husband, Dr. John O'Rourke "Crazy Jack" Napier, the Joker, and their daughter, Trivelino.

One of her staunchest clients was her childhood playmate and lifelong friend, Eddie Blake.

He hated doctors, and he didn't trust them, with good reason, in his case, and he wasn't about to talk to a priest about his problems, so you could count on Eddie showing up at least once a week.

Merrie had grown up watching her mother work, whether it was cards, colds, or broken bones, and so she let her daughter Liv watch her work.

Jack wasn't too fond of the idea; he wanted his daughter to grow up to be the 4th in a line of Drs. Napier, but Merrie was sure that what she was teaching Liv wouldn't get in the way.

That is, if she wanted what either of them expected, when she was older.

Liv was pretty cagey with strangers, regarding them with what most people considered to be the unnatural bright green gaze she inherited from her father.

But she was friendly to people she knew, and Eddie came around once a week; he was her little playmate Paulie's uncle, and, at least Merrie thought, her little playmate Laurie's father.

Like Liv, Laurie had her father's eyes.

When Eddie came in, Liv climbed up to sit at the table with them.

"Hiya, Mr. Blake."

"Hiya kid."

He set his arm on the table, rolled up his sleeve, and Merrie took off the bandage.

"Good. It's healing."

"Who shot you?" Liv asked.

"A badguy."

"Like my Daddy?"

"No, kid. A two-bit badguy."

"Liv, why don't you go down and see Daddy? I have to talk about grown-up things with Mr. Blake."

Liv looked at both of them.

"Okay . Bye, Mr. Blake." She said,

"Seeya 'round, kid."

Merrie waited until her daughter had gone.

"Okay, Eddie, why the hell have you been following me around?"

"Jesus, Merrie, those Church of Humanity fuckers, they're on a rampage! You know , just this weekend they burned a whole family at the stake, out in the Fountain Avenue dump? A guy, his mother, his wife, and two kids. The guy and one of his kids were mutants. They burnt the rest for the hell of it. Ya know they tried ta shoot the fuckin' mayor, because he's Catholic?"

"Eddie, I'm not a mutant. Liv's not a mutant. And Jack, he had an accident."

"They ain't gonna split hairs that way. Jack's the most famous mutant in New York. You know some of these nuts, they say he's the son of the Devil. And you're a witch. That puts you and the kid in harm's way. And ya won't let Jack's bodyguards follow youse."

"You're goddamn right I won't! I love Jack, but he's always jumping at shadows. If I have to spend my whole life, and Liv has to spend hers hiding in a hole, what kind of life is that? I'm from East New York. I can take care of myself. Alright, Eddie. You're all done."

"At least lemme go with youse to the park. When Paulie an'…Laurie are there."

"Jesus, Eddie, you can say "my kid" to me. I didn't have to be psychic to know that's your kid."

"Yeah, she's real cute. Chip off the old block. Just like your Liv."

"That's what I worry about . When those two grow up and hit the streets, God help us all." Merrie joked.

**II: Jack**

The thing that most people didn't realise about Jack Napier was that his accident with the vat of chemicals hadn't affected his mind, only his body.

He was born The Joker; he didn't have to be made that way.

Jack had never been sane and he had always been violent, but he had a soft spot for his gentle, pretty, generous wife, who devoted most of her time to using her gifts and knowledge to help the people around her; the very people who shunned her for all her life because she was a witch and a half-breed.

A soft spot which extended to his beautiful little daughter.

She had his smile, and his green eyes and red hair, but other than that, she was the image of her mother.

The Joker was secure in his world.

He lived in a bunker beneath the ruins of his father's dreams at the docks that was just about as secure as the one Hitler had lived in.

Jack had plans for those ruins, when his daughter grew up to be the 4th in a line of Drs. Napier, his little girl who, because of her mother would have a good, sane, decent life, she would breathe life into those old dreams, again.

As for Jack, he was a man who had a place for everything in his world, and everything in it's place.

And he knew what was going on in his city, with these Church of Humanity crazies.

They were a religiously based almost neo-Nazi hate group calling itself the Holy Church of Humanity, and he almost envied the scope of their reign of terror in New York.

It was targeting his kind, though, and Jack wasn't too fond of that.

It began with people in strange faux medieval robes vandalising stores belonging to Jewish businessmen and black churches, beating up homeless junkies and accosting suspected mutants in the streets.

Their activities escalated to terrible acts of violence.

Whole families were slain in their homes because one or two of them were mutants.

Businesses, homes and churches patronised by Jews, blacks, mutants, and suspected leftists were burned to the ground.

And for those people the Church of Humanity decided were the most evil, they reserved a special fate.

Several arsons in abandoned buildings on the docklands and in various dumps around the city revealed charred human corpses.

They were burning people at the stake.

Alive, and screaming.

Jack thought that his wife, who was a witch and married to a freak of nature, and his daughter, worse, the child of a witch and a freak of nature, would be natural and quite high-profile targets for the killer cult.

They were a bunch of superstitious, uneducated fanatical boobs; they weren't going to choose their victims based on a scientific analysis of their genetic molecular structure.

To these morons, a mutie was a mutie was a mutie.

He never wanted Merrie to leave the bunker without him or at least three bodyguards; but Merrie wasn't the kind of woman who could be dictated to, and she often slipped away to take Trivelino to a park in Bensonhurst where her old school friends Aggie and Edie Blake took their children to play.

She called him from a pay phone to tell him she'd shook the guards again and that she'd be home with Liv by five.

At five-fifteen, the Joker went up into the street, and saw the flames rising from a deserted warehouse.

He wasted no time loading himself and his Tommy gun into the fastest car he owned and practically flew down the two blocks or so to the scene of the fire.

* * *

><p>Jack Napier had seen many horrors in his life.<p>

Some of them had been visited on him, some of them he visited on others, and some had nothing to do with him, at all.

But the worst horror of them all was bursting into the abandoned warehouse and seeing the stake in the middle of it, piled high with wood, and tongues of red and orange fire licking at a charred and blackened corpse bound to it; little more now that charred bones.

Charred bones and a blackened skull, jaws agape in a silenced scream.

Jack didn't believe in most of the things his wife did.

Dr. Napier was a scientist and a materialist, but, had the accident left him with functioning tear ducts, he would have been crying.

Because he knew it was her.

Life was a cruel thing, to a man who was hardly capable of love.

It took his beloved father, in a horrible act of violence, and now his beloved wife.

What about his little girl?

There were five people in strange robes gathered around it, four chanting some weird verse in pidgin Latin that assaulted the Joker's learned ears.

The fifth was attempting to throw a screaming, kicking, punching, biting, thrashing, scratching child into the flames.

Merrie hadn't enough fight in her, but Livvie was his little red devil, and she wasn't going down easily.

She saw him.

"Daddy! Daddy, help me!" his little girl shrieked in terror.

The Joker suddenly remembered he had a machine gun in his hands.

Time to go to work.

He disabled the four with bursts of machine gun fire to their knees.

The fifth, terrified, simply dropped Livvie and began begging for his life.

She ran to her father and hid behind his long legs.

The Joker shot the fifth man's legs out from under him, as well.

He picked Trivelino up.

"Close your eyes, Livvie. Don't turn around. Don't look." He told her.

"Daddy, Daddy, they burned Ma! They beat her up, and then they all got on top of her, and then they tied her to a post and burned her all up, and she's dead!"

Jack's heart lurched in his chest.

Why Merrie? Good, gentle, beautiful Merrie?

Are the sins of the husbands to be visited on the wives?

Jack suddenly remembered when he was 10, and his father came to the orphanage to get him.

He told Daddy all about what they did to him in that place, and Daddy burned it to the ground, with everybody still inside.

That was the first time Jack ever felt love, real love.

"I know, Livvie. So, you know what Daddy's going to do to them?"

"Burn them all up?"

"That's right. But it's not safe for you here, more of these bad people might come. I'm going to take you to stay with Edie. You'll get to see Paulie. Don't tell what happened, though. And Daddy will be back for you, as soon as he's done with these bad people. Okay?"

Liv nodded, tears falling down her tiny, sooty little face.

He put out the flames with the buckets of water the disabled cult members set aside for the task, and took Trivelino to Bensonhurst, promising the wounded fiends that he would return.

On his way back to the warehouse, diabolical tortures filled his mind, but what could be a more diabolical torture and a more fitting end to these fools than to be hoist by their own petard?

Livvie had a good idea.

When he returned, he carefully removed what was left of his Merrie from the metal pole she was tied to, and wrapped her in a blanket.

The four who had been chanting, he tied to the pole and burned alive.

They made a lovely fire.

The fifth, the executioner, he only burned partly, removing all of his extremities with a flaming torch.

After that, the Joker sent for his personal doctor, to save the man's life.

He would suffer a special kind of Hell in the room the Joker kept in his bunker for just such an occasion.

It would take the man several days to die.

That, however, was no satisfaction to Dr. John O'Rourke "Crazy Jack" Napier, the Joker.

For the first time since he was a child, Jack was at a loss, as he drove around in his car with Liv crying softly, and Merrie's remains in the trunk.

Then, he knew just what he would do.

Where he would go for justice.

* * *

><p><strong>The Batcave<strong>

"What the Hell are you doing here! And what is that in your arms, you lunatic!"

Had Bats breached the security of his bunker, Joker would have acted the same way.

But this was not about all that.

"I didn't come here for a fight, Bats. No tricks. I came here because I have no one else to go to for justice. I know you and the Comedian are working together on the Church of Humanity. I want to ask you to work a little harder."

"It's alright. I know Jack. He's playing it straight. What the fuck's going on, here?"

The Comedian came out of the shadows of the Batcave.

The Joker brushed past his surprised enemy, and put the body on a table.

"Look what they did to my wife."

Batman unfolded the blanket.

"Oh Jesus, God!" he heard himself say.

"Oh no! Merrie! Oh no, Jesus, Jesus, God in Heaven, oh no!" the Comedian cried.

Nothing but blackened bones, with some charred sinew sticking to them, the remains still warm and smoking.

The mouth of the charred skull open in a silent scream.

"Jack, where's the kid? Did the lousy motherfuckers get the kid, too?" Eddie asked.

He had tears in his eyes that were spilling down his cheeks.

Merrie was one of the few friends that a son of a bitch like Eddie Blake had; she had been his friend, his doctor and his priest, all in one.

He would be lost without her.

That was alright, Jack was going to be lost without her, too.

He wished he could still cry.

"No. I got there in time to save Livvie. She gave them a good fight. But she saw the whole thing. And when I got there, they were trying to throw her into the fire."

Batman looked at the remains of Meriwether Napier.

She was supposed to have been a good woman, a decent woman, despite her choice of husbands.

A good mother to her child, a source of hope to her community, a good friend to Batman's colleague, the Comedian.

Even the Joker did not deserve the horrible death that the Church of Humanity had given his wife.

The death they had tried to give his tiny, innocent child.

"Where is your child, Joker?" Batman asked.

He covered Mrs. Napier's remains.

"She's in the car. I don't know what I'm going to do with her. She's only half as crazy as I am; I'm hoping that will save her. I want them all dead. Every woman-burning, baby-slaughtering madman among them. But even with my criminal resources, I can't find out who every New York member of the Church of Humanity is, where they live, under what guise as an ordinary citizen they operate. Of course, I do have connections you don't. If you work with me, I'll work with you. We have to put our petty differences aside and get rid of these lunatics before they burn the whole city and everybody in it to the ground!"

"I won't work with you." Batman declared.

"I knew you'd say that. This isn't business! And it isn't part of the silly little game that you and I are playing with ourselves. Or each other. Mr. Wayne, this is about my wife and my child!"

The Bat looked somewhat taken aback.

He had no idea that the Joker knew who he was.

"Dr. Napier, I am doing my best." He finally replied.

"Your best? Are you nuts, Wayne? This ain't no time to fuckin' quibble! We need to get these people the fuck off the streets. You know how many mutants there are in this city, quietly passin' for normal, tryna live their lives like anybody else? I do. Because my Pop was a mutie. I got a sister who's a mutie. They both could pass. But maybe these Co of H cocksuckers know that. Maybe they got a list and they're checkin' it twice, gonna find out who's a mutie and burn 'em real nice? Maybe they're gonna burn my family, next. Or maybe they'll decide they don't like guys who dress up as bats? Or anybody else in a mask.

What about that shit, huh? I'll work with you, Jack, if it means getting these fuckers."

Batman said nothing.

He was suddenly looking over Jack's shoulder, with a look of horror on his face.

Jack turned around.

Liv was there; she had followed him, tiny and frightened and covered in soot.

"Come here, Livvie. It's alright." Jack told her.

She walked out of the shadows, into the light, and Jack picked her up.

She clung to him, and looked Batman right in the face.

He knew that look.

He had worn it himself, many years ago, in a dark and bloody alley.

But she was so tiny, only two years old.

"Dr. Napier?"

"Yes, Mr. Wayne?"

"I'll do it." Batman said.

"Good. I'm going to take my baby home. And my wife. I'll be in touch with both of you. But I have a funeral to plan, and I think Livvie needs to see a doctor."

* * *

><p>Life is cruel, but sometimes, fate is kind.<p>

Trivelino was in the hospital for about a week; she had a few minor burns, and she was suffering from smoke inhalation which led to a relatively minor lung infection.

She was a hardy little thing, though, and got better, quickly.

By the time she got home, she didn't seem to remember what happened.

Jack considered that a blessing for the child.

She remembered that Ma had died, and she remembered seeing her mother perish, but she didn't recall how.

She accepted the memory of a slip and fall outside on some wet concrete stairs that her father put in her mind.

But, after that, Trivelino was a different child.

It wasn't just the nightmares she had.

No, something had changed in her.

Turned.

As young as she was, she had begun to look quite like him when she smiled.


End file.
